{"product_id":"the-human-system","title":"The Human System","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWe have built the most prosperous civilization in human history. We are also, on every measurable dimension, growing lonelier, more anxious, and less certain that any of it matters.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eTHE HUMAN SYSTEM\u003c\/em\u003e, John Leonard takes up a question that economists, politicians, and pundits have spent a generation avoiding. Why, in the wealthiest societies that have ever existed, are so many people quietly unwell? The answer, he argues, is neither ideological nor partisan. It is \u003cstrong\u003estructural\u003c\/strong\u003e. The systems we built to serve us have gradually drifted out of alignment with the creatures who must live inside them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on psychology, history, biology, and behavioral economics, and on the accumulated work of thinkers from Viktor Frankl to Jonathan Haidt to Robert Putnam, Leonard traces how modern civilization has come to optimize for the wrong variables. The result is visible in the rising rates of depression, the falling rates of friendship, the empty institutions, the silent dinner tables, and the vague sense that something essential has gone missing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBut this is not another book of despair.\u003c\/strong\u003e In its final chapters, Leonard argues something urgent and hopeful. We are not stuck. The systems were made by human choices, and they can be remade by them. What is required is the willingness to see clearly, to ask honest questions, and to begin the slow work of repair.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten for readers across the political spectrum, \u003cem\u003eTHE HUMAN SYSTEM\u003c\/em\u003e is for anyone who has felt, beneath the noise of modern life, that a quieter and more important truth is trying to be heard.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFor readers of Yuval Noah Harari, Jonathan Haidt, Sebastian Junger, and Viktor Frankl.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Legend Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50014560518394,"sku":"9781067984502","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0840\/1253\/1962\/files\/imageloader_8195da6b-effe-4824-a413-f445e1d40afe.jpg?v=1786134060","url":"https:\/\/mindsourcebooks.com\/products\/the-human-system","provider":"Mind Source Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}